Talk:Prithvi Singh Kandhal

Untitled

This Wikipedia article when originally published in May 2013 did appear like an autobiography. It has been revised drastically and painstakingly by Sitush (view history) to conform to Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policy. Through 18 edits, Sitush reduced the article’s size from 27,458 bytes to 10,988 bytes. All references were maintained from the point of view of verifiability and neutrality.

After thoughtful and painstaking edits by Sitush as mentioned above, this article has now been drastically reduced further from 11020 bytes to 1684 bytes only, virtually killing the article. All references have also been deleted. There were some primary references besides numerous secondary sources for information, but these are acceptable under the BPL Guidelines, if reliably published. The subject is not being considered notable because he was simply a member of the Graduate Faculty of Civil Engineering at Auburn University (as Research Professor and not a tenure track Professor); rather his other significant achievements and recognitions at national and international levels make him highly notable. A quick search on this subject on Google would confirm it. Therefore, the last edit made thoughtfully by Sitush should please be maintained. Rainbowperson (talk) 09:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)rainbowperson

This Wikipedia article when originally published in May 2013 did appear like an autobiography. It has been revised drastically, thoughtfully and painstakingly by Sitush (view history) to conform to Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policy. Through 18 edits, Sitush reduced the article’s size from 27,458 bytes to 10,988 bytes. All references were maintained from the point of view of verifiability and neutrality. Therefore, the tag of suspected autobiography no longer applies now and should be deleted to avoid any confusion. Rainbowperson (talk) 10:09, 20 March 2014 (UTC)rainbowperson

User:Rainbowperson, Wikipedia Biography of Living Persons says very clearly, "We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be explicitly attributed to a reliable, published source, which is usually done with an inline citation. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. Users who persistently or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing."

Furthermore, WP:SOURCES says explicitly: "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." An author's own publications are primary sources with respect to a biography, not third-party secondary sources. We cannot use them for attribution in a biography, as all Wikipedia articles rely on secondary sources. Finally, Wikipedia Notability Guidelines say clearly, "if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article." I haven't asked for the article's deletion yet, only reduced it to some core sentences which will need to be sourced with reliable third-party secondary sources before the article can be expanded. The autobiography tag was added by user:Sitush, one of our best editors, in this edit. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:27, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

The {{autobiography}} tag was added because the creator and main contributor was Pkandhal (talk · contribs) who has also created a heap of other poor articles about what appear to be members of his family etc. They relied, for example, on private letters between family members. That Rainbowperson (talk · contribs) should have come straight to this, a very low-traffic article about a borderline-notable person, after registering makes me wonder whether it is the same person. It might be best to clarify that and any possible conflict of interest, Rainbowperson, because there are rules relating to use of multiple accounts and conflicts. - Sitush (talk) 11:57, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

References